Who Was the Weirdest Student in School?

Whether you were a model student who shuddered at the thought of breaking your perfect attendance record, or you hibernated through math class, at least you weren’t the weird kid, right? We all remember that strange student who ate office supplies and bit other students like an angry baboon, and some people on Quora shared their memories of the token classroom oddball:

Tastes like Pi.

“Once there was this boy in elementary school, who I had the hugest crush on from kindergarten to 3rd grade,” Dakota Harlow said. “I thought he was so sweet and nice to me, but he was also a little weird.”

“It started out with little things, like how he had a natural affinity towards bugs, and tended to pick up pillbugs, spiders, or bees that had fallen. Not really a big deal (although the bees freaked me out a little, naturally). But then it started escalating.”

“He figured after a while, when he got hungry in class and there was no food, he could always use math book pages! No joke, he would tear several math book pages at a time, and eat them. One time he even offered one to me. I accepted it, of course, being so enamored with him, but I only pretended to eat it. I remember, the page was on fractions too (fractions do not look very edible).”

“When there weren’t enough math pages to eat, and he really wanted that extra crunch he would eat paper clips. His gums and throat would bleed, but he did it often, enjoying the taste as he claimed.”

She continued: “On top of that, a couple extra things he did was putting little pieces of paper in his eye and pretending they were contacts, or literally out of nowhere screeching, saying his screeches were ‘magical.’”

“I think I only liked him because we both liked Harry Potter and he had cool shirts,” she said.

I believe “Avatar” was made for people like her.

Yani Lorque shared a particularly strange student she met in college, but that paved the way for an enduring friendship:

“She’s that one classmate who brings her pet in college. At one point she carried a terrarium jar which contained her pet caterpillar, and on breaks, you’ll see her choosing the finest leaves for her pet,” she said. “That caterpillar disappeared, we didn’t know what happened to it.”

“When we hang out, she’ll sometime stop to talk or pet stray animals while walking, including bugs. She’ll sometimes stop and hug trees, and claim that she gets aroused by trees, especially the big ones.”

“We cannot send SMS to her; she claimed to have developed her stealth technology with indigenous materials. I pretended to believe her.”

“Her socks were full of holes, on her toes and at the back of her heel,” Yani wrote. “On her 19th birthday, I gave her three new pairs of socks. She cried; she was so happy, but she refused to wear the new ones. She insisted that they’re too precious to be worn.”

“I don’t know what had gotten into her, but she was convinced to join a pageant, she used vegetables as accessories. She won. She joined a character impersonation competition once during our literary-musical contest, and she adapted the character of the blue alien from the movie “Avatar.” She was ‘soooooo gooood,’ and I mean it, but she performed facing backstage — she won first runner-up.”

“There are lots of weird and funny things this friend of mine did. I’m weirdo Level 8 in a scale of ten, she’s weirdo Level 12.”

You’re related to an urban legend?! Sounds legit.

Saima Usmani, a nurse, said, “I had a classmate in elementary school named Natalie who claimed she was a descendant of Bloody Mary, so that if she said ‘Bloody Mary’ into a bathroom mirror 3 times, she would not be killed, nor would anyone with her.”

“Her ravings instigated a period of ‘Bloody Mary-hysteria,’ which involved various groups of students in the class leaving lunch in bold dramatic gestures to go try their luck with Bloody Mary in the bathrooms. Eventually, the teachers had to intervene. At the end, Natalie moved away claiming she was moving to a mansion in upstate New York where she would have a whole floor as her room.”

“Who knows, maybe it’s true, and maybe Mary was partial to blood relatives (she wasn’t).”

You want to know how I got these scars?

Apparently, blogger Pinar Tarhan has had her fair share of eccentric classmates throughout grade school:

“One classmate cut her wrists with a box cutter. Not to commit suicide, just to have something cool to show other students. It left a scar. We were around 13–14.”

Another girl was infamous for stating: “’I won’t date anyone who doesn’t look like Hercules.’ (Meaning Kevin Sorbo — we are 31 now.) Granted, we were only 13 and we all enjoyed the show. Still a ridiculous thing to say.”

“A trio of girls who shrieked and did somersaults thinking they were Power Rangers. ALL THE TIME. Ages 11–15. Yes, it lasted for years.”

“One girl wrote stories featuring herself and two of the most famous members of the Backstreet Boys. Kind of like a PG version of ’50 Shades of Grey,’” she said.

I had no idea that graham crackers were seafood…

“I knew this kid in kindergarten,” Tom Zino recalled. “He had two first names. Every day he brought lunch from home, and it invariably included individually wrapped graham crackers. The pack contained two graham cracker sheets, the perforated kind you can snap in half, making four nice squares.”

“Rather ritualistically, he would unwrap and snap the crackers in half and set the plastic wrap aside. He would enthusiastically and vigorously chew two of the cracker squares while holding a third square in his hand. Rather than swallow the two crackers, he would regurgitate them onto the third cracker he was holding and use the fourth cracker to make a sort of ‘chewed up graham cracker sandwich.’”

“Methodically, he would eat this concoction of his, much to the dismay of those not used to the practice. If that wasn’t enough, he would then consume the wrapper.”

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Seriously, here’s hoping that all of that strange behavior was “just a phase,” and that they’ve all moved on to become happy and well-adjusted adults, like the guy I knew in high school who would throw open containers of blueberry yogurt into crowds of students at the end of lunch. I’m sure you knew a bizarre classmate or two in your day too, and I hope you tell us all about it in the comments!